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Aspect of the Hare

Roleplaying, Hunterisms, Linux, and Various Other Shenanigans...

Hello, I'm Pike. *waves* I'm a Linux-using geekgirl who is madly in love with the hunter class in World of Warcraft. Oh, and exploring the vast world and lore that Blizzard made. ...but mostly the hunter class.

It has been said by others that I am a "good hunter", but I by no means consider myself to be an ultimate expert. I just like to teach and tell stories, and share what I do know with others. Hence, this blog.

Pull up a chair and make yourself at home-- I've got Warp Burgers in the fridge and Kibler's Bits for your pets.

Copyright

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

A Hunter's Guide to Karazhan Bosses

Greta said she was looking for some guides on being a new hunter in Karazhan. Now perhaps ironically enough, I've been wanting to write a guide like this for some time, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. But now I've got a bigger motivation for it, so... here goes nothin'!

Disclaimers before I begin:1.) Exalted with the Violet Eye notwithstanding, I'm still a noob who didn't set foot in Kara until a couple months ago.2.) Different guilds/groups do things different ways.3.) This guide is not going to cover Netherspite because I haven't downed him yet. (See, told you I was a noob.)4.) Some of the sample movies are not exactly stellar because they are often the first time we downed that particular boss so we were kinda shaky. But a shaky movie is better than nothin', right?

A fairly easy guy who is basically a tank-and-spank, although poorly geared groups can still wipe on him pretty easily, so beware of that. You begin with just his horse, Midnight, which you is what you will be attacking at the beginning of the fight. Eventually Attumen will come out and join up with Midnight and you'll fight them as a single entity. Really the two most important things to remember are:

1.) Stand on the horse's butt when the two merge. Okay, not literally. Stand about as close to the horse's butt as you can get and still shoot. This is still pretty close since the dead zone is gone now. Otherwise he will charge you and bad things will happen.

2.) Upon the merge, do not attack for a few moments to allow the tank to re-establish aggro. A misdirect may be in order, but check with the tank first.

Depending on your group makeup, this is the fight you may have to do some trapping on. Basically Moroes is accompanied by four people (who are randomly picked each time from a pool of six) and you have to take out all five; this, of course, means lots of crowd control while you take them down one at a time. Most of the time, you will not be asked to trap for very long because if all the DPS is focused on a single mob then all of them (except Moroes) go down pretty quickly, and most groups opt to take out the trap before Moroes to prevent any issues. Don't worry too much about it; wait for the trap cooldown before the pull starts, make use of your space in the room, and you should be good.

Basically the only other thing to worry about in this fight is that Moroes might toss a heavy-hitting DoT on you called Garrote. There's not a lot you can do about this except make sure the healers know about it-- so as not to bug them, check before the fight if they want you to maybe call it out or if they'll know/somebody has Deadly Boss Mods.

As always, watch your mana, keep your traps out the way of where everybody else is fighting, toss more than one distracting shot on your mob just to be safe (they really like to lose aggro on you and go after the healer instead), and you should be good to go. Now is a good time for a pull shot macro if you don't have one so you don't accidentally break your own trap.

And yes, Moroes has a tendency to disappear and re-appear, it's normal.Sample Movie: Entelechy vs. Moroes

I won't lie, Maiden can be tough, but once you figure her out she's not that bad. Also: pally healers will make your life super easy in this fight thanks to Blessing of Sacrifice. Give yours a thank-you hug today!

Our guild does it like this: before you initiate the fight, everybody runs around the room she's in, hugging the wall, and finding a spot that isn't particularly close to anybody else. Then, after the tank engages the fight, everybody moves up to the bottom step of the little platform she's on and DPS's from there. Every so often she will toss Holy Fire on somebody which will kill them pretty quickly if they're not cleansed; again, you will want to check with your healers or the "cleanser" beforehand if they want you to call it out or if they will be notified some other way. Also every so often Maiden will stun everybody that isn't in her little inner circle... just sit it out.

Keep Mend Pet on your pet the entire time because he is going to be taking some damage the whole time, and you should be all set. (Now is a great time to mention that you will definitely want to look into getting at least a couple ranks of both Arcane and Fire Resistance for your pet, those are the types of magic you will be running into most in Kara).

Opera works like this: there are three possible different boss fights you can do here, and they are random and you won't know which one you'll be doing until you actually do it. There are tricks that will let you figure out which one it is in advance (pally bubble, hunter feign death, etc.) but other people just run in full-speed-ahead, so you'll have to find out how your own guild or group likes to do it.

The Big Bad Wolf fight is a fun one and probably my favorite of the three Opera events. For the most part it's a tank'n'spank with a twist: Big Bad Wolf will randomly turn people into a Little Red Riding Hood Gnome and chase them around the room, and if he catches you, well, you'll die. But guess what, you're a hunter! When you turn into a little gnome, just Feign Death. He'll forget about you. That's all. You'll still be a gnome and can't attack, but at least he won't be attacking you.

If the Feign Death is resisted or if it's on cooldown: run around the room in a pre-designated way (I've always gone counter-clockwise myself); hug the wall and do not stop running until you aren't a gnome anymore.

That's it on him, most of the fight will be spent doing pure unleashed DPS so just be careful not to grab aggro from the tank.

This is probably the most technically difficult Opera fight but as such I find it to be very intense and rewarding. Basically you fight Julianne first, then Romulo, then both of them at the same time. Sounds easy right? Well here's the catch: During the last phase, Romulo and Julianne both have to die within ten seconds of each other or they will rez each other.

This is how my guild does it: We have two tanks (as you hopefully will too), throw one each on Romulo and Julianne, get one down to 15% or so, stop all DPS, unleash a bunch of DPS on the other one, and then finally come back to the first. We've got this pretty "down" at this point and we can usually have them dying within three or four seconds of each other.

All you really have to remember is to take your pet off of one and put it on the other when the time comes to switch DPS.

Wizard of Oz is pretty straightforward, you have a bunch of characters that need to be killed and the group you are with will tell you what order they want to accomplish this in; Dorothee and Tito are typically the two you will want to dispose of first. After all these guys are taken care of, the Crone will show up, and she's also pretty straightforward so long as you don't stand in her tornado. Pretty simple overall.

You may be asked to help chain-fear Roar via Scare Beast if you don't have any warlocks or anything, but other than that you probably will just be DPS'ing.

Remember: don't start DPS on the Crone until the tank has a hold of her. Misdirection works nicely.

You can only fight Nightbane if you have somebody in your group who has a quest item who can summon him. Once he is summoned, he flies down and you begin the fight. As a hunter, you will often be asked to Misdirect on to the tank here, and every time he comes back down to the ground from here on out. The fight is mostly a tank and spank except that sometimes, Nightbane will summon Charred Earth, which means that a particular area of the ground turns red and does all sorts of horrible damage to you, so you want to get out of it by running to the other side of the wall-- pretty straightforward. He also fears every so often, but it's no big deal (unless he fears you into the middle of Charred Earth... just run really fast to get out of it.)

One important thing, though, is to keep an eye on your pet's health, because sometimes Charred Earth will pop up underneath your pet and it does about 2000 damage every couple of seconds and there's no way you'll be able to keep him alive-- so pull him back to you until it's safe again.

Now, every so often, Nightbane will take to the air again, and a bunch of mobs will show up sort of in the middle and you've got to AoE them down. Mostly I just leave this up to the mages/warlocks/boomkins but I'll try to help out with my Explosive Trap/Volley/Multi-Shot. When he comes back, remember to Misdirect onto the tank.

And, well, that's about it for Nightbane! Not as scary as he looks originally.

Oh Curator. He has been known to make grown hunters cry either tears of pain or boredom, depending on how well things are going.

Okay, overview on this fight: There are going to be these little sparks flying around called Astral Flares that need to be DPS'd down. (This can be made simple with an easy /target Astral Flare /cast Auto Shot macro.) Every two minutes or so Curator is going to Evocate and take twice as much damage as usual, that's when the DPS should be focused on him. (But make sure there aren't any more fuzzballs!) If you have this fight down then you should be able to finish Curator off on his third Evocate, though I'm sure it can be done even sooner.

Hunter Tricks I've Learned: Keep your pet on Curator the entire time so he can proc Ferocious Inspiration while you focus on the sparks. Oh, and don't forget to conveniently use The Beast Within when Curator evocates; if you time it right you will have one ready at each evocation. (This is the secret to doing yards more DPS than anyone else in this fight, by the way). Also, you may opt to have Blessing of Salvation on this fight instead of Might or Kings simply because if the flares aggro on you, you just have to kind of sit there and take a bunch of damage while you flail around and do stuff like Raptor Strike, which is just embarrassing.

Arcane resist gear/trinkets (like the one you get from one of the Kara quests) will help here if you have it, otherwise it's not a particularly huge deal.

Keep an eye on your pet and use Mend Pet as needed, and also keep an eye on your mana because it can be a mana-intensive fight.

I'm going to go ahead and toss this fight in a unique category known as "Hard to learn, easy to master", because if your whole group is new to him you will probably wipe a bunch of times but once you figure out how to do it, it's really pretty easy.Sample Video: (Note, this was made when we were still learning the fight and as such it doesn't include any of the fun hunter tips I mentioned earlier): Entelechy vs. Curator

I dunno if this means I'm insane or not but this is my favorite fight in the dungeon. It's crazy, it's hectic, it's hard, I love it.

Pet control is absolutely vital in this fight if you want to keep your pet alive the entire time. It's difficult but it's possible.

Here's the deal with Shade of Aran: He has no aggro table. He randomly attacks anything and anybody including you and your pet. For this reason, watch for pet aggro and be ready to toss up Mend Pet at a moment's notice. (If he is really feeling malicious he will kill your pet pretty easily but hopefully that won't happen.)

He has a lot of special moves that require special action. Blizzard is going to throw beams of ice down around the edges of the room so you should be standing somewhere towards the center. Arcane Explosion goes like this: no matter where you are standing you will be pulled to the center. When this happens, immediately turn around and run to the wall. You are going to be moving really slowly unless you happen to be big and red at the moment; it's okay, you'll make it, just keep moving and bring your pet with you. This is vital. If you don't take your pet with you immediately he will die from Aran's explosion. Another trick: turn slightly to the right which will force your pet to the outside of you so he has even less of a chance of getting hit with the explosion.

Flame Wreath is a pretty infamous move of Shade's where the room is going to be filled with fire and if you move, the raid will blow up. Not exaggerating. Do not move during Flame Wreath. You can keep shooting and you can keep doing your shot rotation, and it's okay if your pet moves (though I don't tell him to, just to be on the safe side), but do not move an inch until the fire goes away.

Partway through the fight elementals will show up which will need to be taken care of in some way; ask your group how they plan on doing this.

For many groups, it won't be long after that Aran is going to sheep everybody. You really can't do anything to get out of this but immediately after the sheep effect wears off he's going to hurl a giant fireball at you so have a health potion, healthstone, or band-aid ready to save your healers a lot of grief. (Don't forget Mend Pet). If you are super fast than you'll have Aran down before he gets to this part, but I've yet to see that myself.

One thing that is always fun to do during this fight is to always have a Snake Trap in the middle of the room. Aran is going to see the snakes as targets to attack, which means he won't be attacking the raid and will buy everybody a little extra time.

...yeah, see, told you it was a crazy fight. It's so fun though. Just keep an eye on your pet and on your health/mana (be prepared to self-heal if needed, your healers will be stretched pretty thin), and don't worry too much if you die at first, it's a little hard until you really learn all the tricks Aran has up his sleeve.Sample Movie: Entelechy vs. Shade of Aran

So long as you have the AoE to keep the imps off of everybody, this is a straightforward fight that can get pretty long if the DPS isn't all there so have Mana Pots ready.

Basically you are going to spend this fight DPS'ing Illhoof (sometimes his big imp buddy, too-- check with your group to see how you want to handle him) but every so often Illhoof is going to "sacrifice" somebody and stick them in a circle of chains, and you want to get all your DPS onto the chains immediately to get that person loose, or they will die in about three seconds. Granted, the person in the chains can be there for quite a while with sufficient heals, but the longer the player is in there, the more Illhoof will get healed, hence why the fight can really drag on and on if your DPS isn't on the ball. You can alter your Curator macro here to say /target Demon Chains which will make things quicker.

If you are being sacrificed there's not a lot you can do and Feign Death isn't going to help (there seems to be a rumor I hear sometimes that it will get you out of it-- it won't) so just calmly say that you're being sacrificed (unless Deadly Boss Mods is announcing it) and wait it out.

Your pet might get hit sometimes, just toss Mend Pets on him as needed.

Probably my least-favorite fight in the the instance just because a lot of it is so random and out of your control. All it takes is a bad infernal placement to wipe the raid even if you were doing great up to that point. Regardless, there are things you can do to minimize the potential pain.

This is a pretty intense fight with three phases: during the first phase you really just have to worry about the random infernal drops and Enfeeble which will temporarily bring you down to 1 hit point unless you are standing at max range (which you should be, as a hunter). Don't worry about it, your health will shoot back up after a few seconds. Usually a caster will have a raid symbol over their head as the person you have to stand behind during Enfeeble, as long as you are next to him or behind him you are good.

During Phase Two Prince starts chucking random axes at people and starts throwing DoTs on people, and during Phase Three he introduces even more annoying things like that. Fun fun!

Typically you will be standing sort of near the door and Prince will be tanked along the left wall because it minimizes crappy infernal placements as much as possible. You may or may not be asked to open with a Misdirect. Be very careful if you do this because he can see you almost at max range, so hit him with an Arcane Shot or something similarly instant cast the second you are in range, or he'll see you first and come one-shot you. (Trust me on this one. ...yeeeeah.)

If an infernal lands on your head or anywhere near you, you MUST move or you will die in about five or six seconds. When in doubt, follow the person with the raid symbol over their head, they've probably done it before.

If an infernal lands right next to Prince, you're safe, but your pet is not. Recall your pet to you because you can't Mend Pet him through it. It is better to have your pet alive and by your side giving you an extra 2% damage through Focused Fire, than having him dead and being unable to use him later on.

And once again check with your healers to see if you need to announce if axes on you or if they've got another way of being notified.

This fight is really very luck-based, so pray that the Infernals will be nice to you and hopefully you'll be on your way to a shiny new helmet.Sample Video: Entelechy vs. Prince (kind of a bad movie because you can't see a lot, and because I was still learning the fight so my pet died and then I died... but dang if the ending wasn't epic. Longest 1% on a boss ever.)

Sorry guys, I've actually yet to beat this one because I'm fairly new to the game (didn't start playing until after Burning Crusade and all) and because I refuse to be "run through" Kara by bigger guilds-- we're doing this the good ol' fashioned way and I love it. But trust me, the second we get to him I will come back and edit it into this guide.

In the meantime, there have been a couple comments left about any bosses I didn't cover, and Loronar wrote up a guide to them as well, which is very much worth a look!

Raid Mats/Consumables

Aside from the obvious full ammo pouch of bullets and the stack or two of Pet Food, this is what I usually bring for myself to a fresh Kara run:

I try to have an Agi Elixir, the Mageblood Elixir, and a Warp Burger on me at all times, and Locke is always buffed with Kibler's Bits or Sporeling Snacks depending on the fight/part of the instance. Just use your judgment.

[Elixir of the Mongoose] is often cheaper than the Major Agi one and will actually get you slightly more pure crit but I like the Agi myself because it stacks better with Kings and also gives me more AP than Mongoose. I wouldn't fault you for using this one, though.

And please don't forget your water.

Alright, there you go. And because according to my clock it's taken me over three hours to write this post, I think I'm going to wrap things up. Greta, I hope that you found this guide to be a little helpful, go have fun in Karazhan! And as always, lemme know if you've got comments or questions!

Hunter specific: I've been told mend Pet will keep your pet up if he's in a "Charred Earth".

Do not DPS the dragon when he's in the air.

We usually ask hunters to MD dragon onto tank just to have a good heafty aggro lead.

From max range, DPS dragon when he lands. Send pet to melee once the tank has the dragon in position. When the dragon takes to the air, collapse on the tank, after skeletons spawn, quickly DPS them down and return to your "ground position".

Netherspite: If you're not asked to take a beam.. Then this is an opportunity to let loose. When someone is in the Red beam you can't pull aggro. So burn him down. Keep mend pet up as he has a Shadow AOE.

If you're in a beam, then worry about the beam before -everything- else.

first of all, you totally rock. I am so so so excited you put this together!

and videos! I get pretty overwhelmed with new stuff, so seeing it beforehand and having an idea of the flow will really help.

I'm still fairly new to chain trapping (though I'm starting to get random compliments in pugs, so I guess I'm doing something right). Its awesome to see how you do it.

I read somewhere that I can distracting shot my target while it is in ice to build up more aggro and it will not break the ice? I've never tried it... but wonder if that would help with the not running at the healer when they get free thing. (and I have my beast lord armor for cooldowns)

(do you remember that game "don't break the ice"??)

*runs of to add astral flares macro and scare beast buttons to an easy spot...

Greta - I'm glad I could help. =D Yes, you can use Distracting Shot on a mob while it's trapped and it won't break the trap. But use a macro when you do this so you don't start auto-shooting right after which would just stink.

I've found that having snake traps up during Shade of Aran REALLY helps. It's fun to watch Aran target a snake for a fireball/frostbolt/arcane missile attack. :)

By the way, Shade of Aran will polymorph when he runs out of mana. It is not connected to the elemental spawn. If you have a group with a fair number of spell interrupts you can beat him down before he polymorphs. (Use interrupts on frostbolt/fireball casts only). Never viper sting Aran - you want him to have as much mana as you can.

The elementals spawn when Aran is at 40% health so there will always be elementals.

Might be worth noting if your just learning these fights using a Flask over two exilirs might be a bit more cost effective since it persists through death and well...you'll be wiping alot learning these fights.

pike this has to be a good guide all the main parts are covered very well good job, just wanted to add 1 thin gdunno if you know but on huntsman if you get 1 player to stand at max range he/she will take the charge, ie put a hunter at max range just btwn the alcove of the door but besideds that you dont good guide will direct anyone who ask for tactics on kara

One thing to note. When talking about Maiden you mention needing Arcane and Fire resistances. If you are applying those just for the maiden fight don't. Maiden is doing holy damage and we can't train pets for Holy resistance but we can give them Avoidance which negates a lot of her damage. If you want to give you pet resistances for going through Kara then you need Fire, Arcane, and Shadow because except for maiden this is the type of damage most of the mobs/bosses will do that might hit your pet. Typically I give about rank 2 for each of those and rank 3 for shadow but thats more due to some of the PvP I do.

Cool post. I joined the guild for Kara for the 1st time this week after making 70 last Friday (thx for the grats btw). I got the bracers off Attumen and tonight the Beastmaw shoulders from Opera. Was gutted that the cloak dropped off Aran though, my rogue has been after that for 9 months and another rogue won it. Oh well, it's all a conspiracy by Blizz to keep us playing...

From watching BRK's vid on Shade, it looks signicantly easier to continue running forward when you are pulled in before the arcane blast. It natural as humans to think, "Oh geez, get back to where I was." But instead of whipping around you can just ride that wave in and GTFO of there.

I realize I'm a bit late with a comment here, but I was reading through your blog and thought it'd be interesting to see Kara from a hunter's perspective. I play a warlock as my main and a holy priest, so the ranged element is something we share.

Maybe by now you've caught on to this, or someone has suggested it, but there's a defintie way to speed up Maiden from the ranged DPS perspective. 10 seconds of Repentence stun is unacceptable for damage dealing classes.

If you are showing enemy cast bars (which you really always should), and are standing on the steps (which you should be if you want healers to be able to cleanse you), be overly sensitive to the REPENTANCE spell being cast. It's about a 1 to 1.5 second cast, I'm not sure, but if you have a knee-jerk reaction to press forward and jump at the same time, you will get stunned in mid-air and keep falling in a forward motion, landing within range of her aoe attack.

You'll get hit, brought out of stun, and you'll be able to step back and keep dps'ing while loling at the now sillies who didn't jump into the aoe.

Timing this is a problem. You'll find yourself nervously jumping whenever Maiden casts anything, then feeling foolish... but it feels really good when you realize you've beaten her at her game.